Process-eating Bug in Firefox 1.5 for Mac OS X

There's a bug in the Mac OS X version of Firefox that has been around for more than three years, and in the latest version released yesterday, the bug is still present.

When you click and hold to highlight some text on a webpage in Firefox, your computer's processor(s) spikes to 90-100% usage until you let go of the moust button. While this is not a problem for every Mac OS X Firefox user, it is definitely a problem for laptop users. A pegged processor, even for a second or two, will kick on a Powerbook or iBook's fan(s) and therefore more rapidly drain the battery.

As much as I like Firefox, this is a problem that should've been fixed a long time ago. Some people are reporting that the same processor spiking occurs when navigating around in Google Maps, as well as many Web 2.0 apps (that use Google's API).

This problem does not affect non-Mac OS X versions of Firefox, or other browsers on the Mac platform.

Correction/Note: Deerpark is the development code name for Firefox 1.5, and I'm running the G5-optimized version on this G5 I'm in front of. When the app was recompiled from the sourcecode, the name wasn't changed, which is why it shows up as Deerpark.